America’s white population shrinks for the first time as nation ages

'White fertility has gone down. There’s a little bit less white immigration in the last year'

The number of non-Hispanic white people in the United States decreased for the first time in the nation’s history between 2015 and 2016, according to new figures released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The data show the nation’s white population is aging rapidly, as Americans delay their decision to have a family and as the flow of foreign immigrants from European countries ebbs. At the same time, minority populations are growing much faster, hastening a demographic shift that has been decades in the making.

The average non-Hispanic white American is 43.5 years old, according to the new data. The average Hispanic American, by contrast, is 29.3 years old.